


love me tonight and I promise I'll love you forever

by theamazingpeterparker



Series: atlantic hearts [1]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Beaches, F/F, Fluff, Genderbending, Girl Direction, New Jersey, Summer Romance, Summer Vacation, cisgirl!ziall, niall wont buy a GPS, zayns a waitress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-20
Updated: 2014-07-20
Packaged: 2018-02-09 15:34:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1988262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theamazingpeterparker/pseuds/theamazingpeterparker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Niall's always been more attracted to people whose skin could look like warm honey or caramel in the sunshine. People who looked like they could be mermaids, or pirates. Niall’s always wanted someone who loved the sea as much as she does, and now she’s practically sitting in the lap of a girl who gets weary around tide pools.</i>
</p><p>Or, the one where Zayn's a city girl and Niall knows all the Jersey shore towns and it's a summer fling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	love me tonight and I promise I'll love you forever

**Author's Note:**

> this has been sitting in my computer forever (and it's probably more of a love letter to the jersey shore than it is to ziall.)  
> shoutout to clare for convincing me to post it. wotevs.  
> title from 4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy) by Bruce Springsteen. naturally.

Niall’s never been very good at keeping herself in one place. Jersey shoretowns each have their own pull about them, and summer means exploring all of them. She’s woken up in beach-front houses and she’s not really sure which shorepoint she’s actually _at_ , but she’s directionally gifted enough to find her way back to the AC Expressway or the Parkway and figure it out from there. It’s the thrill of being lost in a crowd or a town with nothing but the city curfew and the folded up paper maps in her glovebox (because she refuses to waste her paycheck on a GPS). Niall’s never felt the need to stay in one place, because she’s pretty sure that the world is meant to be explored. She never felt the need to be rooted anywhere.

And then she met a girl with amber eyes and a fear of the ocean who carried a jar full of shells around in her bag and then Niall started thinking, _maybe I want to be wherever this girl is_.

She meets Zayn at the Tick Tock Diner. She’s on her way home from some party in Jersey City, tried getting directions from one of the drunk locals that was at the house. She ends up driving half an hour before she realizes that the kid had given her directions to go east, not south, so it’s with a defeated sigh that Niall pulls over at the diner and gathers up her crumpled glove box map and dignity, sulking her way inside and into the first booth against the windows.

It’s almost 2AM on a Sunday night, and for the first time since she got her license, Niall is quietly considering buying a GPS when someone approaches the table.

“Welcome to the Tick Tock Diner, ‘m Zayn, can I get you anything?” a soft voice says, and Niall blinks up at the waitress. She looks exhausted, dark circles under her eyes and her hair falling over her face while she looks down at her notepad and waits for Niall’s order. She’s wearing an apron over a black tanktop, tattoos crawling down her arms and glasses slipping off her nose. She’s dressed like every other waitress Niall has ever had, and maybe it’s because it’s 2AM and Niall’s kind of hungover, but she’s dumbstruck by how beautiful she is.

“Uh, just a coffee, yeah,” Niall says, an immediate knee-jerk answer, partly because she feels bad for this girl working the graveyard shift at a diner and partly because she’s so taken aback by how pretty she is. The shock wears off pretty fast, though, because just as Zayn begins to turn away, Niall’s stomach rumbles.

“Uh, actually,” Niall calls sheepishly after her waitress, who turns and meets Niall’s eyes with an expectant look on her face.

“Can I get a basket of fries and a chocolate shake?”

Zayn just shrugs, scribbles it onto the notepad. “You still want coffee?” She says it with the north Jersey twang. _Caw-fee_. It makes Niall smile a little bit, and she nods.

Zayn comes back in ten minutes with her order, sliding it onto the table carefully to avoid crumpling Niall’s map that she’s got spread across the table.

“Roadtrip?” Zayn asks, her voice just as quiet and cautious as it was when she first came up to Niall’s table.

“Lost, actually,” Niall answers around a fry that she’s already crammed in her mouth. “You know the fastest way to get back down towards, like, Philly?”

Zayn leans against the separation between booths and shrugs. “Garden State Parkway, probably? Turnpike? Depends how much toll money you’ve got, I guess. Parkway entrance is, like, ten minutes from here. Go down Allwood, there’s a traffic circle at the Home Depot. Anything else I can help you with?”

When Niall looks up at her, Zayn’s drumming her fingers against the rubber cushion on the booth. “Believe it or not, diners are shockingly boring once all the old people and drunk college kids leave.”

Niall shrugs and nudges her basket of fries towards her. “You can help me eat these fries? I’ll still tip you.”

Niall and Zayn talk for an hour and a half. Zayn drinks her coffee black with sugar. She’s from Princeton but she’s studying Art History and English at NYU. Her favorite places in the world are Central Park and her parent’s kitchen. She doesn’t mind the beach but she doesn’t like the ocean. She collects flattened pennies. Her favorite song on the diner’s jukebox is Springsteen’s _For You_. She’s got 27 tattoos. She’s a dog person. Her notepad is filled with little doodles, skulls and wings and city skylines.   

She’s everything Niall isn’t. She’s every brooding city-slicker that Niall has ever made fun of on the boardwalk.

But she makes Niall smile and _laugh_ , god, her laughter carries through the empty restaurant as Zayn tells her stories of art students at school or tourists who come to the diner. She talks quietly. Her eyes are everywhere but on Niall, occasionally flicking to her to make sure she’s still listening. Niall can tell she talks with her hands and she watches them while the waitress speaks. She’s restraining herself as she talks about her final paper for last semester, some thesis about the connection between Freudian psychology and Shakespeare’s plays, a paper that took ages, but Niall’s watching her hands twitch and fidget with bits of napkin or salt packets, her nail polish chipped black and dainty silver rings littering her knuckles. She’s easily the most fascinating person Niall has met in months.  So, after leaving a $10 tip and a promise to see her again, Niall leaves with Zayn’s phone number on a napkin and a fluttery feeling of hope in her chest.

::

It’s not easy to drag Zayn away from the city, but Niall is charming and persuasive and uses a lot of suggestive winky smiley face texts to finally get Zayn down to Island Beach State Park.  It’s ten minutes from Seaside Heights, but there’s no boardwalk or drunk people or crowds. It’s just Niall and Zayn and Harry and Louis, who are off surfing half a mile down the beach. Zayn had quietly asked Niall if it would be okay if they walked down to the jetty to collect shells for Zayn’s jar. Niall had smiled, looped her pinky around the raven haired girl’s, and mumbled, _of course we can_.

Niall spends more time watching Zayn sift between the sand and rocks than she does actually helping Zayn look for shells. Zayn’s hair looks chestnut brown in the sun, and she’s wearing these big white-framed circular sunglasses that would look ridiculous on absolutely everybody else but her. Niall tries counting her tattoos, all of them in shades of black and grey swirling down from her shoulders and around her hips, a wolf on her calf and a tiger on her shoulder. Niall wants to ask her about every single one of them, if her mouth would stop watering long enough for her to formulate a sentence. She’s not sure if Zayn knows she’s staring and just doesn’t care, or if she’s far too invested in finding snail shells that she doesn’t notice Niall’s gawking.

She scrunches up her nose when she laughs, asking Niall “are you _sure_ you’re not going to get sunburned?” and Niall scoffs and tugs her salty blonde hair up into a bun.

“Me? An Irishwoman? What could possibly make you think I’d get sunburned?”

(They end up back at Niall’s apartment that afternoon. Zayn had been sitting on the floor, sifting through all the scallop and mussel shells she found that day, when Niall had sulked sheepishly into the room after a long debate with herself over whether or not she should ask Zayn to rub aloe on her bright red back. When Zayn looks up and sees Niall holding an untied bikini top pitifully to her burned torso, she bursts into a fit of laughter so loud and wonderful that Niall momentarily forgets about her reddened kin to laugh along with her. Zayn patted the floor in front of her and Niall sat—difficultly—ignoring Zayn’s teasing while she rubbed the lotion carefully onto her shoulders and back. Niall’s too focused on where Zayn’s long, golden legs are bracketing Niall’s hips while Niall sits between her legs and lets Zayn’s gentle fingers probe and tease at the tan lines from Niall’s bikini.

Niall wonders if Zayn likes girls. Niall wonders if Zayn is better at orienting herself in certain situations.

“Bet you’d look really good with a tan,” Zayn’s voice pipes up, still quiet but with a bit of an edge. Niall feels her run a fingernail down the center of her spine. “You know, if you’d wear sunscreen. Like any responsible adult would. Or anyone over the age of 10.”

“If I had worn sunscreen, you wouldn’t have had the privilege of rubbing lotion onto my back,” Niall quips back, not bothering to hide the smile in her voice. “Besides, I don’t really tan. I just get freckle-y.”

“ _Freckles_?” Zayn half-gasps, half-squeals, like this is the best news she’s ever heard. She pokes at Niall’s shoulders, her hands slipping up around her neck to trace along her collarbones. “Like, shoulder freckles? _Face_ freckles?”

“Yu _p_ ,” Niall pops the _p_. She’s never really been a fan of her summer freckles, always been more attracted to people whose skin could look like warm honey or caramel in the sunshine. People who looked like they could be mermaids, or pirates. Niall’s always wanted someone who loved the sea as much as she does, and now she’s practically sitting in the lap of a girl who gets weary around tide pools.)

They end up going to the shore a lot together. Somedays, they’ll just wander down boardwalks, spending too much money on balloon-dart games trying to win one of the ridiculously large stuffed rasta bananas, or flirting with the staff outside of The Fudge Kitchen to get more than one free sample.

 

Zayn will let Niall talk about anything, and Niall mostly ends up talking about the shore. Talks about how her family always used to come to Seaside Heights in the summers, and then after Hurricane Sandy and the fires, half of the boardwalk was destroyed. She talks about the Funtown Pier and the old Merry-Go-Round that was in the old arcade, talks about the old candy shop where her dad would buy her and her brother half a pound of salt water taffy each. And Zayn…Zayn just _listens_. It’s the first time that Niall’s actually been able to talk about how important the seaside is to her without Harry or Louis or anyone teasing her about it. Zayn walks alongside Niall, steals bits of her cotton candy and licks the sugary remains of her ring-covered fingers, but she won’t speak. She’ll listen and listen to Niall’s stories while they walk, until they’ve reached the end of the boards and there’s nothing but bars and apartments left to see. And if Niall gets quiet after a bit, quiet just because she’s not used to _this¸_ not used to someone respecting her and listening to her stories without just dismissing her as a crazy girl who spends too much time on the beach avoiding the real world, Zayn will link their pinkie fingers together and Niall swears on her life that it’s more grounding than any boat anchor or dock could be.

Niall offers to buy Zayn shells, one day in Cape May when they’re strolling through the Washington Street Mall. There’s a little shop of touristy things, hermit crabs and car magnets and little jars of shells and shark teeth that are all polished and intact for $3.

“You’re always looking for your jar,” Niall points out as she examines all the packaged shells. Zayn’s face is unreadable behind her big white glasses. “These are all nice ones, though.”

“My shells are nice, too,” Zayn says, her voice simple but firm. Zayn never gets angry, never gets annoyed or fed up or raises her voice. But her tone is enough for Niall to put the basket back down and poke the girl in the side.

“Sorry. I just thought maybe, like…you’d want some shells that weren’t broken or sandy, you know?”

Zayn shrugs, pushes her sunglasses up on her forehead and settles Niall with a steady look. She’s stopped wearing makeup, Niall’s mind randomly registers while the older girl picks up a giant polished conch shell that’s obviously not from anywhere on the Jersey coast. Not that Zayn wears a lot of makeup _anyway_ , just eyeliner or lipstick, but now her eyes are just clear and clean, dark eyelashes framing her eyes brilliantly without any help. The dark circles that were under her eyes from that first night in the diner are gone, replaced with a smudge of mascara from where they fell asleep last night on Niall’s couch. Zayn’s voice is the only thing that brings Niall’s attention away from her face.

“I like my shells,” Zayn says, putting the conch down carefully and looking up at Niall with a soft expression. “My shells are nice because I got them with you. I picked them out myself. I know where they came from, you know? Like, where do you think this thing came from? Hawaii?” she pokes at one of the spines on the conch shell and shrugs. “I like knowing where things come from. I like knowing that I can pick certain things and remember them.”

This is probably the most that Zayn has spoken since that night in the Tick Tock Diner, and Niall decides that this is a moment that absolutely must be commemorated.

Niall buys them both friendship bracelets, the ones with little colored beads braided into them that all have apparent meaning and are pretty much impossible to get off once they’ve been tied on. She catches Zayn looking at the little plaque above the display, but she doesn’t say anything when Niall plucks out two blue ones and pays for them.

“It says the blue beads mean love,” Zayn tells her as Niall holds one of the bracelets in her teeth while she ties the other around Zayn’s wrist. Once it’s tied, she grins and offers Zayn her own wrist and the second bracelet, giving her a winning smile when she replies, “I know.”

(The bracelets become a Thing. There’s shops in Wildwood that sell 3 bracelets for $5, so Niall buys Zayn ones that mean _luck, intelligence, admiration_. Zayn buys Niall three that mean _friendship, happiness, potential_. They’re everything that Niall is too afraid to say out loud, but Zayn wears them all summer long.)

Niall thinks if they were shoretowns, Zayn would be Cape May. She’d be big, beach-front Victorian houses and long, stretched-out beaches and watching the sunrises and getting coffee at the corner café in the morning, or getting gelato late at night from that little shop right at the edge of the bay.

Niall doesn’t really picture Zayn as a party-town type, which is why she’s completely shocked when they go to Ashbury Park and Zayn decides to get her belly button pierced in one of the parlors on the boardwalk.

“You’re so _brave_!” Niall cackles, blushes when Zayn gives her a wolfish grin and stretches herself out rather beautifully on the piercing table.  When the piercer starts swabbing at Zayn’s stomach with a cotton ball, Zayn makes grabby hands towards Niall and Niall obediently goes over and takes her hand, fiddling with the bracelets around her wrists.

“You wanna get one, too?” Zayn teases, squeezing Niall’s hand a bit.

“Could never,” Niall mumbles; she’s too busy watching the tanned skin of Zayn’s stomach jump when the piercer lines up the cool metal barbell with her navel, marks the skin there. Zayn lets out an excited squeak when the needle starts to pierce her skin and Niall has to look away. She looks down at Zayn’s face instead, and the girl’s expression twists from one of excitement to let out a little, pretty gasp as soon as the needle goes through. She squeezes Niall’s hand once and then lets go while the piercer slides the jewelry in, her face a little fazed as she sits up and half-heartedly listens to the piercer’s instructions on how to care for it. Niall doesn’t hear a word of it, because she’s too busy replaying that little mewl that slipped out of Zayn’s mouth.

(They get drunk that night at some bar just off the boardwalk, crammed into a little booth in the corner nursing a couple bottles of Yuengling. Niall outright asks Zayn if she’s got a pain kink and Zayn just gives her this feline smirk and purrs, “wouldn’t you like to know?”

Niall scratches gently at her forearm with the points of her bottlecap and Zayn flushes a deep pink. Niall figures she got her answer.)

They spend a weekend in LBI, because there’s no loud boardwalks or strict Port Authority or drunk people in the streets. Niall insists on an afternoon by the bay. She hunts around the marshes for crabs and Zayn plans herself firmly on her picnic blanket with those sunglasses and some depressing western novel. They go to the shore mall, a little three story building filled with more tourist trap gifts. They buy more friendship bracelets and purple hairdye, on a whim.

They ruin the hotel bathroom. Zayn’s got Niall bent over the sink and she’s scrubbing the lilac dye out of the ends of her hair, the porcelain that was white an hour ago is now tinted purple and Niall’s hair smells like bleach and chemicals. Niall hums _Flying Purple People Eater_ and gets drunk off the minibar and Zayn has to stop herself from laughing long enough to comb out the tangles in Niall’s hair with her fingers and rub more aloe into Niall’s sunburned shoulders.

Zayn’s like an octopus when she’s drunk, and they end up tangled together on one of the beds watching Jaws. Well, Niall watches Jaws. Zayn’s got her head buried in Niall’s neck, giggling muffled things like _sunny shoulders_ and _I love your freckles more than anything_ , and it’s a good thing that Zayn falls asleep first, because she pecks Niall on the nose and promptly falls asleep, and Niall’s not sure she could use her sunburn as an excuse for how brightly she blushes.

They properly kiss one night in Wildwood. Nothing really prompts it. They’re standing along the aisles of jelly beans and M+Ms in one of the candy shops, each of them with a sizeable bag of sweets, bickering over Skittles and Jolly Ranchers. Zayn’s mouth is bright blue from the water ice they just ate, and Niall wants to kiss her, so she does. It’s quick, both of them hiding behind a display of chocolate covered pretzels, but Zayn presses herself closer immediately and slots her lips between Niall’s, and it tastes like blue raspberry and cotton candy and it’s so sweet, sweeter than anything in this shop if only because it’s _Zayn_. As soon as Zayn pulls away, Niall almost leans in for more, but Zayn lets out a bark of a laugh and scampers off to examine the box of giant jawbreakers. Niall’s heart feels like it could burst.

They buy one of the jawbreakers and it’s bigger than Niall’s fist. They try breaking it on the walk back to Niall’s apartment, taking turns throwing the plastic bag it’s in onto the concrete street with all their might until Niall finally shatters it. They share it, tucking the chunks of sugar into the pockets of their mouths and they spend a week seeing who can finish their part sooner. Zayn does.

They kiss again. And again. And again. They kiss when they’re drunk and when they’re happy and when they’re alone. Niall’s not sure if it’s all leading up to something or not, but she doesn’t care. They kiss on the ferris wheel in Ocean City, stranded at the top and both of them restless after a day in a city with no alcohol and all tourist families. They kiss on the beach, when Zayn has to literally chase Niall down the beach and tackle her to the ground and force her to put on sunscreen. Zayn pins her to the sand and sits on her hips, pecking her on the cheek before pushing Niall’s shirt up roughly and squirting a puddle of lotion onto Niall’s stomach. She rubs it in roughly, whenever Niall’s not sunburned, her fingers kneading into Niall’s hips and thighs and pushing at her breasts and she’ll lean close and mutter, “lube up!” in Niall’s ear. Needless to say, Niall doesn’t get sunburned for the rest of the summer.

Niall gets Zayn to go waist-deep in the water. Zayn’s shaking by the time they get out but Niall pulls her into her lap, mutters _proud of you, babe_ , and leaves bruising kisses wherever Zayn’s body tastes saltiest afterward.

(Niall thinks that Zayn’s got a little something for exhibitionism, too, because nights after they get drunk and bite bruises into each other’s necks, Zayn will strut down the boardwalk in her bikini top and shorts without a care in the world for the delicate shades of purple that litter her neck and chest. Niall walks behind her and thinks that getting lost on the way back from Jersey City was the best thing that ever happened to her.)

There’s a lot of late night diner and Wawa runs. Sharing baskets of fries and swapping sips of smoothies and milkshakes at 6AM on the beach, waiting for the sun to come up. Zayn’s never a morning person, but she always looks so happy watching the sunrise, so it’s worth it to wrestle her awake early enough to walk down to the water. There’s a lot of love notes scribbled on napkins and maps drawn in the sand and little clusters of broken shells that they sit and assemble together. There’s photobooth strips in all of Niall’s beach bags now, Zayn and Niall crammed into the little booth and making the ugliest faces they can, kissing whenever they can’t come up with a new pose in time for the next picture to be taken. They start leaving them in the booth, inspiration for other couples who are stuck on ideas for what to do in their photos. There’s lots of airbrush and henna tattoos, drunk in Atlantic City getting playboy bunnies on their lower backs as a joke and Niall getting a skull and crossbones behind her ear. They go to Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! Museum and Niall sobers up pretty fast when Zayn insists on reading every single placard for every single exhibit. They lose $200 in Caesar’s casino, and Zayn teases Niall about her _Irish luck_ the whole taxi ride home, mocks her _you’ll put $100 on black, but you won’t buy yourself a GPS? How on earth are you going to be able to visit me at school in the city_? And that’s the first time they talk about this going further than the summer and it makes Niall so explosively happy that she leaps across the room when they’re home and pounces on Zayn, kissing her so hard they fall off the couch.

There’s a lot that neither of them have to say. Zayn falls off the jetty one day, wandering out too far on the rocks and slipping into the water. It’s only chest deep but she loses her handful of shells and there’s a flash of panic on her face when Niall jumps in to pull her out, and Zayn is quiet for the rest of the day. Niall buys her an ice cream cone, stepping up to the counter at Kohr’s and ordering an orange creamsicle cone without hesitation while Zayn shrinks into her side. They go back to Niall’s apartment and Niall runs them a shower, lets Zayn step in first before getting in after her. Niall unties Zayn’s bikini top and presses her up against the tile wall, lathering up her hands with shower gel before kneading them into Zayn’s shoulders and down her back, washing off all the sand and sweat and sun. Zayn lets her, stands stock still under the hot spray of water but gradually relaxing into Niall’s touch. Niall kisses her quickly before craning her neck to suck a bite into Zayn’s collarbone, onto her breast, her fingertips digging into her hipbones and Zayn’s hands tangling through Niall’s wet hair. They stay in the shower until the water runs cold.

Zayn’s jar gets filled up. It’s not just shells anymore—there’s flattened pennies with ferris wheels and boats and city logos pressed into them, little trinkets from gift shops and arcades and the remains of bracelets that have frayed up and fallen off. Zayn’s started carrying it in her bag all the time now, eager to add bottle caps and pebbles and arcade tokens whenever they come across them. Niall loves it. Niall loves her. She loves Zayn’s big white glasses and the way she’s lived in maxi skirts and tanktops this whole summer, showing off her tattoos and belly button piercing and love bites, so different from the waitress with the smudged makeup and black jeans and shirt at the diner from so long ago. Niall loves summer Zayn, with her big black floppy sunhats and her simple black bikinis and her wrists lined with braided friendship bracelets. She knows they’re quite a sight together, Niall usually living in jean shorts and a bikini top, any old baseball cap she can find, walking with Zayn, who puts an outfit together every time they go on the boardwalk, crop tops and shorts or a bandeau and long skirt. Zayn is still a city girl in the middle of July and wants everyone to know it.

 Zayn  talks with her hands now, all the time, whenever she gets excited or drunk or worked up about anything, her chipped nails and silver rings glinting when she waves her hands around to make her point. Niall has no doubt that she’d love Zayn no matter what season it was, no matter what city they were in. Niall thinks that maybe she could leave the seaside, if it meant getting used to new places with this amber-eyed girl.

They’re sitting on a bench, slowly making their way through slices of pizza, when Zayn tells Niall she loves her. She tosses a chunk of cheese to the seagulls that have been circling them for ten minutes, grins over at Niall when she crinkles her nose in disapproval. It’s late July. Early August, maybe, Niall doesn’t keep track during this time of year, and there’s a toddler pitching a fit on the bench across from them and there’s a woman screaming about the swarm of seagulls and it looks like it’s going to rain, and Zayn just looks over and says, “I was right.”

Niall’s got a mouthful of crust, and all she can do is raise her eyebrows in response.

“I was right about you looking good with a tan, Ni. And I think I love you.”

Niall doesn’t choke on her pizza, doesn’t drop dead right there. (She’s proud of not doing either, thanks.) She just grins down at her flip flops, smiles so hard it hurts her sunburnt cheeks, and she bursts, “I LOVE YOU TOO!”, loud enough that a few people turn to stare at them. Swallows the last bite of her pizza and crawls into Zayn’s lap, grabs her face and kisses her for all she’s worth.

Zayn laughs. It’s Niall’s favorite sound, has been since they met in that diner. Niall never knew that love could be such a subtle thing; she always expected it to be loud and bright and the world would know about it. And Zayn is just. Easy. _Love_ and _Zayn_ are quiet and gentle and simple. Maybe Niall’s spent too long thinking that love had to be like the sea, powerful and big, that she forgot that the sea can just be calm too. It can just _be._

And that’s it. It’s easy. Zayn makes things easy. Zayn helps Niall ground herself, and Niall reminds Zayn that not everything has to be under control.  Niall looks at her that night in the arcade and thinks about Springsteen songs. Thinks about all the flattened pennies and photostrips they’ve left up and down the coast, thinks about the stupid fortune cards Zayn insists they get from the ZOLTAR Fortune Tellers in all the arcades (Niall has kept every single one). Niall thinks, when Zayn turns and gives her a pointy little smile before starting her fifth round on a crane game, determined to win one of the stuffed Pokémon, that she never needs anything more than a city curfew, a folded paper map in her glovebox, and this girl with golden skin and a jar full of seashells.

 

 

 

 


End file.
